A Professional Look, Instantly

Have you ever spent hours laboring over a report and then took a look at it in Print Preview and decided you didn’t like what you saw? Great new features in Office Word 2007 make it easy for you to try on several different styles before you commit to one you want to use. You can see how a publication will look before you go through changing font styles, colors, tables, and more. This section introduces the new features in Office Word 2007 that help you hit that professional look right off the bat.

Applying Quick Styles

Office Word 2007 includes a new Quick Styles feature that enables you to preview a number of styles before you select the one you want to apply to your document. Click to position the mouse cursor in your document at the point you want to apply the new style; then point to the selection in the Style command set that you want to preview. To see additional styles, click More in the lower-right corner of the style examples; a gallery of style choices appears (see Figure 4-6).

Three Things to Try Mary Millhollon and Katherine Murray, authors of Microsoft Office Word 2007 Inside Out, recommend these as their favorite new “must try” features in Office Word 2007: Building Blocks enable you to create, save, and use building blocks of content in your documents. Document themes give your documents a professional look quickly. Full Screen Reading view lets you review the document in a clean workspace.

Choosing a Document Theme

Document Themes enable you to change the way text, tables, and special elements are displayed throughout your document. A theme includes the typeface of headings and body text (including color, style, and spacing) as well as graphics such as rules, boxes, brackets, and borders. To preview different styles in your document, select the Page Layout tab and click Themes. The Themes gallery opens, displaying a number of different theme choices. Point to a theme style you want to preview, and the changes appear in the document window (see Figure 4-7). When you find a theme you want to use, click the theme to apply it to your document.

Late-Breaking Feature: Blogging in Office Word 2007 The hottest new feature in beta 2 of Office Word 2007 is the new blogging feature. Now you can blog directly from Office Word 2007 by opening the File menu, pointing to Publish, and clicking Blog. The Blog Post tab provides you with the commands you need to publish posts, set up blog accounts, format, and proof your blog entries. [View full size image]

List Improvements Bullets and numbering styles are now easier to apply because of the new Bullet Library and Numbering Library. There’s no more navigating through menus and submenus to get what you need; now you can easily choose a new bullet or numbered list or create a new style by choosing the options in the Library windows. The new Bullet Library displays a gallery of graphical or simple document bullets. You can also create your own or make changes to the bullet level from this gallery. The Numbering Library gives you a choice of various numbering styles and also provides the means for creating a new number format, changing list levels, and setting numbering values.